Friday, 29 June 2012

Although I really enjoyed playing Funcom's The Secret World beta weekends, and really like the concept of three mystical organisations competing with each other to command the mystical and diabolic, and had similar feelings playing the game to when I played The Darkness and Alan Wake (two games I really enjoyed) I don't think I'll be playing.

1) Mostly because I won't have a computer to play it on between July 16 and probably end of July. As I'm moving countries (again) I can't really justify spending $50 on it for only two weeks of play.

2) My current PC runs the game like crap. I tried PvP and it ran like a dog - max 15 fps, average 5fps! :eek: (it's the same reason I can't play PvP in SWTOR)

3) I found it too grindy. If my main quest tells me I should go into another area, I should be able to go into another area and be able to survive. I found upon moving to Savage Coast I had HUGE difficulties with the quests. Even those I managed to complete, I never felt my character got enough experience to survive the next challenges. I realise that the exploration quests were turned off for the last weekend so my lvl was a little less than it could have been, however, it just didn't feel "fun" in the Savage Coast.

4) I don't like the skill system. Well, I do like the system, I think it's great that you can make a character in almost any way you see fit, but I think the slowness of accumulating points is very off putting. If you've got an exponential system that means you have to pay more points to go up higher ranks in the skills (so, to grow your pistol skills you have to pay 1, then 2, then 4, then 7, then 9, then 12 etc), then you should be getting more points more often as you progress, but this isn't the case in TSW.

5) Not being able to reassign points is a major put off too. I suspect this may have simply be turned off for Beta, which is fair enough, but there are some skills which are just worthless to certain builds or play styles, and you only get a feel for them after playing.

I may return to it sometime in the future, but with Guild Wars II coming out in August, I really don't know if I'll have the time or money to play it.

Softography

Producer on My Little Pony:Friendship is Magic on iOSProducer on Playful Minds Math on iOSAssistant Producer on Silent Ops on iOS

Krome Studios Melbourne:

QA on Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole on PS3, Xbox360 and WiiQA on Game Room on Xbox360Assistant Producer on unannounced and cancelled Wii titleAssistant Producer on Transformers: Rise of the Fallen on Wii/PS2Lead QA on SceneIt? Box Office Smash on Xbox360QA on Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on WiiQA on Hellboy: Science of Evil on Xbox360 & PSPQA on The Clone Wars: Lightsaber Duels on Wii

Krome Studios Adelaide:

Senior QA on Star Wars: The Force Unleashed on PSPQA on The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night on WiiQA on The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning on PS2

Ratbag / Midway Australia

Lead QA for Ratbag Games ToolsQA on Wheelman on PS2 (cancelled)Lead QA on Speedway Sprintcars (PAL) on PS2QA on Saturday Night Speedway on PS2 and PCQA on Dukes of Hazzard:Return of the General Lee on Xbox